I decided when I was six that my favorite color was blue. Blue like the far-off horizon as I perched at the peak of the playground slide. Blue like the crayon I clamped in my small fists, coloring in lakes and rivers and seas. Blue like the eyes of the girl next door.

She had wavy blonde hair that tumbled down her shoulders and deep, perfect dimples. We sat next to each other every morning on the school bus. When the frosty winter light beamed through the window at just the right angle, her eyes looked like wide pools of crystal and diamond, like clear ocean water.

To me, she looked like a princess, like the heroine of every story and fairytale I consumed. I fell in love with Cinderella and Aurora as they found their happy endings, followed Annabeth Chase and Bella Swan through adventure after adventure, was enraptured by women like Katherine Heigl and Reese Witherspoon and Emma Stone on screen. Even the most popular girls in school were always the ones with light bouncy hair and big doe eyes: picture-perfect all-American faces.

As I grew up, I began to yearn for something more. I wandered the aisles of my local library, and perused Netflix and every new hit movie for main characters who looked like me, hungry for a sort of validation I still can’t quite name. But stories with Asian heroines remained stubbornly elusive.

I learned that girls like me didn’t get the guy, didn’t find their fairytale endings, or lead their own stories. And so my face became nothing more than a surface I plucked at in the mirror. I cut my hair, curled my hair, bleached my hair, dyed my hair. Tugged at my eyes to make them look bigger, rimmed their edges in eyeliner and shadow. Swept contour across my cheekbones, blush across my cheeks, pulled at my lashes and lips. I dreamt of being pretty, popular, loved—the kind of person who drew second glances and stares from across rooms.

And I’d look and look and turn away, then look back and see my own face looking back at me, ever crooked and plain and flat. And I’d feel disappointment and revulsion warring in my stomach, a sinking sadness that this was the body I’d be trapped in for the rest of my days.

—

My sister is three years younger than me. We’ve been close for all of our lives: tussling over the TV remote, splitting all of our snacks down to the centimeter measurement, sharing Barbies and books and beds on every family trip, much to our chagrin.

But most importantly, we talk. Conversation has always been the cornerstone of our relationship. As elementary schoolers, we’d chatter about the next Beanie Boo we wanted to get (the giraffe or the penguin?) while hanging off of each others’ beds. As kids, we’d spend hours sprawled out on the couch, debating the merits of each Harry Potter house. As preteens, we pored over the results of our BuzzFeed personality quizzes and our favorite ice cream flavors and everything bright in this new world we were finally growing into.

And then we were teenage girls together. Our lives became busier and busier, inundated with homework and extracurriculars and our own growing pains. In turn, our preferred locations of conversations shifted—now we talked in front of the bathroom mirror at 8 a.m., getting ready for school side by side. In the fresh light of the morning, lemon soap wafting through the air, we combed our hair, scrubbed our faces, brushed our teeth in tandem. We’d transform ourselves from rough and tangle-haired to clean, presentable, and ready to be perceived. Talking of mascara and lip stain, looking pretty, getting ready.

In light of all this, I got to witness my sister growing up. But it wasn’t until far later that I realized she’d actually grown up, metamorphosed from a tiny elementary schooler into a lanky teenager in the blink of an eye.

The thought hit me on one of those mornings—that while I hadn’t been paying attention, my kid sister had finally begun growing into herself. Long-limbed and slender, peering into the mirror as if an ancient language was inscribed on the glass. “Is my eyeliner even?” she asked me anxiously. 

I looked back at her silhouette in the yellow dawn light, hands animated, eyes bright. I looked and all I could see was the little girl who had napped on my shoulder every car ride. I looked and looked and felt my heart quiver with sadness. I didn’t know what to say.“Yeah, it’s even.” And with that, she looked satisfied.

—

The last few weeks before I left for college stretched long and lazy like a cat across a windowsill. August blurred into nothing but days of endless sun and heat. In the meantime, my sister and I found ourselves lounging aimlessly on the couch for hours, searching for any sort of entertainment; not even Netflix seemed to call to us anymore.

A few days into this monotony, I proposed thrifting, searching for something—anything—to break the hot, arid boredom. 20 minutes later, I had my hands on the steering wheel and my sister on aux, off to the only good thrift store within a 10 mile radius.

She fell asleep quickly, as always. At every red light, I found my eyes wandering to her: the feathery dark hair she’d complained about being cut too short for weeks, the outfit she wore that had gone through three iterations that morning, the perfectly-angled eyeliner. 

I thought of her. Then I thought of me. Then of all the little girls who looked like us—and also so very different—peering into the mirror and studying their angles, as if their faces could be reshaped if they simply wished hard enough. As I had done, as my sister had grown into.

When we finally walked in, the thrift store was loud and cluttered, swarming with older adults. Yet it was undeniably charming, as if every dusty, shiny antique and secondhand piece of clothing was winking at us.

We spent close to an hour flipping through the shelves, alternating between laughing at ridiculous graphic tees and pulling candidates for purchase from the racks. We crammed ourselves into the corner between two racks and shielded each other from the public while we tried on tops, laughing all the while.

Eventually we found a mirror; my sister turned this way and that, admiring the tank top she’d pulled from the shelf. Watching her, I was struck by the notion again: she’s all grown up. This time though, I saw her eyes trace her own body with a sense of newfound satisfaction.

“You look good,” I told her when she asked. And I meant it. 

I couldn’t quite put it into words, but there was something so freeing about it all. This moment, imperfect and hopeful, brimming with a sense of beauty all its own. The way we’d found loveliness on the very last hanger of a dusty thrift shop. The way my sister glowed.

—

Last week, she texted me again with another update on her thrifting adventures. She’d gone with a friend this time; they posed in the mirror, flashing twin smiles at the camera. I couldn’t help but grin back at the screen, watching her suffused in her own light.

So I’m coming to believe that maybe real beauty is reflected: borrowed from the bits and pieces of the people we love, a secondhand patchwork of color and warmth. Maybe we find it tucked away into the nooks and crannies, the body I’m slowly coming to terms with, the corners of bathrooms and thrift shops.

I’m teaching myself to search. I feel it when my friends wrap their arms around my shoulders till we can’t tell where one of us ends and the next one begins. I hear it in the sound of my parents’ swooping Mandarin, the echoes of chopsticks chiming against porcelain at the dinner table. 

But mostly, I see it in my sister’s smile as she throws her head back laughing in the passenger seat, my hands on the wheel. I catch a glimpse of her eyes in the side mirror, bright and dark and warm. I’m driving towards the sunset, the wide blue horizon. I’ll drive her anywhere.